Hurt by Hamas, Americans Sue Banks in U.S.

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: April 15, 2006

Not one but two Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up on a Jerusalem boulevard where an American college student, Jason Kirschenbaum, was strolling one night in December 2001. The blast shattered his left arm and hammered chunks of metal into his leg. But at least, he says, it left him alive.

Five months later, a suicide bomb blast hurled Gloria Kushner, a nurse, against a stand in an outdoor market, wrenching her spine. On a crowded bus, another bomber's shrapnel carved a hole in the shoulder of Sarri Singer, a youth group volunteer. Eugene Goldstein has a bullet lodged near his heart from an ambush. He does not have his son, who was killed at his side.

They are Americans who went to Israel and came home with enduring wounds after they were caught in attacks claimed by Hamas, the militant Islamic organization that took over the Palestinian government last month.

These victims of terrorism in a foreign land seek more than healing; they want justice, but lack a clear remedy. So they are trying a novel strategy: going after banks they say helped to finance Palestinian terrorism.

They are among some 50 Americans -- either survivors or relatives of people killed in attacks -- who have filed multimillion-dollar suits in federal court in Brooklyn against three prominent international banks, Arab Bank, NatWest and Cr?t Lyonnais. The suits charge that the banks helped to channel funds to Hamas, which the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 1997. Some of the suits claim that Arab Bank transferred millions of dollars in life insurance payments from a Saudi charity to families of suicide bombers, providing Hamas with a recruiting tool.

The three banks are vigorously challenging the lawsuits. They say many of the financial transactions were tiny electronic blips in their routine international business and that they were not aware of any links to Hamas or terrorism. In a motion to dismiss one of the cases, a lawyer for NatWest and Cr?t Lyonnais, Lawrence B. Friedman, said the plaintiffs' efforts ''to foist responsibility for their tragic circumstances'' onto the banks were ''misguided'' and had no legal basis.

The prospects for the plaintiffs are uncertain. The suits against Arab Bank have survived a motion for dismissal, the first major hurdle in any lawsuit, but the judge in the suits against the other two banks has not yet ruled on dismissal motions.

Antiterror litigation of this sort has few precedents. The suits are the first to focus on international banks, saying they were a central link in terror finance. In 2004 a federal court in Chicago ordered three Islamic charities and a fund-raiser in the United States to pay $156 million in damages to the parents of David Boim, who was killed by Hamas. But federal suits against Saudi Arabia's royal rulers, charging they financed al Qaeda in advance of Sept. 11, have largely been rejected by the courts.

The plaintiffs in the banking lawsuits have felt a new urgency to their cause since Hamas took over the Palestinian Authority on March 30, after winning elections in January. The United States and the European Union have cut off direct aid to the authority, and Middle Eastern banks are looking warily at handling its business, in part because of the New York suits.

While the lawyers do battle in testy letters and dense briefs, the survivors cope with injuries and memories that leave them feeling isolated.

Mr. Kirschenbaum, 22, who had left his home in New Rochelle, N.Y., for a year of study at an Israeli yeshiva, recalls the easygoing mood on Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem as young people flocked there on Saturday night, Dec. 1, 2001.

The two bombers detonated themselves at opposite ends of the street within seconds of each other. One was 20 feet away. With blood dripping from his pants cuff and his left arm limp, Mr. Kirschenbaum stumbled up the street. A friend took him to a hospital. Hamas soon claimed responsibility for the bombings.

The bomber near Mr. Kirschenbaum had been wearing a jacket stuffed with nails and other bits of metal. Israeli doctors dug half a dozen nuts out of Mr. Kirschenbaum's arms and legs and repaired his fractured arm. But they could not repair his outlook. He was fearful of staying in Israel, but did not feel entirely right back at home either, eventually leaving college without graduating to join his father's diamond business.

''You get all these questions,'' he said. ''People would ask me, so what happened? How did you take it? All these questions. I would answer them. But I didn't believe anybody understood what I was going through.''

Mrs. Kushner, the nurse, had recently left Florida to resettle in Israel when she was caught in the blast at the open-air market in Netanya, on the coast, on May 19, 2002. Now 69, she lives behind a scrim of pain from her damaged spine and a knee that is still painful. She had to give up her life in Israel, returning to Florida for medical care. Her days are migrations from one doctor's office to another. Her nights bring dreams of ambulances and screaming. She hopes the suits will bring financial relief from the costs of the special orthopedic treatment she needs.

For years, Mrs. Kushner said, she felt defeated, though that is changing. ''I thank God for every new day. I thank him that I'm a survivor of terrorism,'' she said.